Draw Electronic signature Form iOS
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FAQs
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What new electronic gadgets have amazed you the most in 2017?
Tern Vektron: Folding electric bike shown in TRON movie.ReMarkable : Tablet havinv sketchpad and jounal kinda.Dashbot : An in-car voice control gadget like Amazon alexa made spclly for car.Motiv Ring: Formed from a lightweight titanium shell, will track your activity type, time spent moving, your active and resting heart rate, calories burned and steps taken/distance covered. It’s also swimproof (waterproof to 50 meters) and shower and washing-up friendly.Kodak pixpro: The first 360° VR action cam. You can edit your recorded video and imagery through the camera’s pixpro editing and stitching software.Razer Project Valerie : It is a multi-monitor portables with the powerful gaming laptop which has two auxiliary displays behind its central screen. when the three 4K iGZo displays are all extended and operating together, they deliver a total screen resolution of 11,520 x 2,160!!Kuri Smat robot: Household robot,offering the ability to entertain children, keep an eye on your property, search the web for you, play music and podcast etc.NVidia Shield TV : Supports Gaming and video-watching,upgrades with google assistant.Asus Zenfone Ar : a Google tango-enabled handset with a massive screen, impressive specs and has – serious Ar credentials.Dell Canvas: It is a horizontal smart workspace that features a 27-inch QHd screen and support for touch, totem, dial and pen input.LG levitation: It is a station features a floating, egg-shaped speaker that hovers above a base unit and pumps out your tunes of choice, the speaker delivers audio in 360 degrees and will descend automatically back into the base when it runs out of juice.LG Tone studio: It is a bluetooth headset is a good example of this, with the personal wearable system boasting wireless earbuds that charge whenever they’re stored inside the neckband, making them easy to carry and charge at the same time.The tone studio also features a hi-fi daC (digital to analog converter) and delivers audio in awesome 3d surround sound.Lenovo Miix 720: Is a hybrid two-in-one that features a 12-inch, 2,880 x 1,920, 3:2 screen with a kickstand, a seventh-generation intel Core i7 Kaby lake processor, an intel Hd 620 Gpu, up to 16Gb of RAM, and an ssd drive of up to 1 Tb.LG Signature OLed TV : It is just 2.5mm thick and Can be mounted on magnets. It has dolby Vision and dolby atmos built-in, giving you a cinema-like experience in your own living room.Netatmo Smart Smoke: It is an smoke alarm, triggering 85 Db alarm when it detects smoke, sending real-time alerts to the user’s phone. The message sent depends on which room the smoke is detected in, too!Technics Grand Class Sl-1200Gr : It is a vinyl type record player,which is setting new benchmarks for audio fidelity and build quality.LG Sj9 soundbar: It is the world’s first soundbar to support Dolby atmos-encoded effects ,supports high-res audio, and can upsample low-bitrate audio files.HTC Vive: A wireless VR headset.Canon Powershot G9 x Mark ii: Canon’s pocket-friendly shooter is a super-streamlined, portable powerhouse, offering a 20.1-megapixel sensor, a diGiC 7 processor and a light-friendly f/2.0 lens and auto-nd filter.Lazer Genesis LifeBeam: It is a lightweight helmet monitors your heart rate via a rechargeable sensor in the headband. A processing unit sends data to your cycle computer, smartphone or smartwatch via Bluetooth, so you know whether to pedal harder or ease up.Beast Athlete: This wearable for strength training uses an accelerometer to measure the power, speed and force of your movements. It can help you prevent injury and perfect your form. Data is pinged to the companion app, where you can adjust workout goals to your taste.Under Armour HeatGear CoolSwitch Supervent Sleeveless Shirt: This compression vest with four-way-stretch material uses CoolSwitch technology – a coating on the fabric that draws heat away from your skin. A mesh back panel enhances breathability and dries sweat.The Ring Video Doorbell: Is easy to install and offers something really cool – the ability to see who’s at your door wherever you are. You could tell the postie to leave your parcel around the back, or simply tell ‘unwanted guests’ that you’re not interested.Yale Smart Home kit: It comprises of a brain-shattering 104dB alarm (with a key pad), a sensor, PIR cameras, and a smart hub and app to control it all. You can remotely arm and disarm with a simple swipe in the iPhone or Android app.YuNEEC Typhoon h ProRealSENSE: Loaded with Intel RealSense obstacle detection tech that maps the world in 3D and helps avoid collisions. It shoots 4K video and comes with an Android tablet-equipped controller.DJi INSPIRE 2:The original Inspire was the number one choice for professional broadcasters. This second gen can shoot 5.2K video, while forward, downward and upward obstacle sensors enable flight in tight spaces.Dali Katch: A Bluetooth speaker with rechargeable battery which can work for 24 hrs.Penclic’s Mouse B3 – which is designed to combat repetitive strain injury (RSI).Nodus Hifold Wallet: A slim card wallet, internally RFID-shielded to prevent ‘card clash’. Pop your primary contactless card in the front slot and simply tap your wallet to pay.HuaWei HoNor Selfie Stick: Lightweight, pocketable, extendable up to 66cm and perfect for those monopod moments, this mini selfie stick fires off via the audio jack on your Android or iOS phone.Aftershokz Sportz Titanium: These bone-conduction headphones offer the perfect combination of sound, sports safety and visibly good looks.IXoost ESAVOX: A sound system made out of Lambo parts for the biggest raging bull. It has two side cabinets, housing a 6.5-inch and 8-inch speaker, stand either side, like a pair of doormen escorting the centrally-mounted 1-inch tweeters and 15-inch sub with two stereo valve amps.
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What is the main reason of the downfall of blackberry company?
Shortly after the release of the first iPhone, Verizon asked BlackBerry to create a touchscreen “iPhone killer.” But the result was a flop, so Verizon turned to Motorola and Google instead.In 2012, one-time co-CEO Jim Balsillie quit the board and cut all ties to BlackBerry in protest after his plan to shift focus to instant-messaging software, which had been opposed by founder Mike Lazaridis, was killed by current CEO Thorsten Heins.Mr. Lazaridis opposed the launch plan for the BlackBerry 10 phones and argued strongly in favour of emphasizing keyboard devices. But Mr. Heins and his executives did not take the advice and launched the touchscreen Z10, with disastrous resultsLate last year, Research In Motion Ltd. chief executive officer Thorsten Heins sat down with the board of directors at the company’s Waterloo, Ont., headquarters to review plans for the launch of a new phone designed to turn around the company’s fortunes.His weapon was the BlackBerry Z10, a slim device with the kind of glass touchscreen that had made Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. the dominant names in the global smartphone market.But one of RIM’s directors was frustrated by what he saw, and spoke out, according to one person who was in the room. There is a cultural problem at RIM, he told the group, and the Z10 was a glaring manifestation of it.The speaker was none other than Michael Lazaridis, the genius behind the BlackBerry, the company’s co-founder and its former co-CEO. Minutes earlier, he said, he had spoken with Mr. Heins’s newest executive recruits, chief marketing officer Frank Boulben and chief operating officer Kristian Tear.Mr. Boulben and Mr. Tear had dismissively told Mr. Lazaridis that the market for keyboard-equipped mobile phones – RIM’s signature offering – was dead.In the board meeting, Mr. Lazaridis pointed to a BlackBerry with a keyboard. “I get this,” he said. “It’s clearly differentiated.” Then he pointed to a touchscreen phone. “I don’t get this.”To turn away from a product that had always done well with corporate customers, and focus on selling yet another all-touch smartphone in a market crowded with them, was a huge mistake, Mr. Lazaridis warned his fellow directors. Some of them agreed.The boardroom confrontation was a telling moment in the downfall of Research In Motion.Once the giant of the smartphone business, RIM, which was renamed BlackBerry Ltd. in the summer, is now on its knees. The company reported a $965-million (U.S.) fiscal second-quarter loss Friday, primarily because of a massive writedown of Z10 phones that sit, unsold and unwanted, about eight months after they first hit the market. The company is cutting 4,500 jobs, 40 per cent of its work force, in a desperate bid to bring costs in line with plummeting revenue.Investors, who have lived through the destruction of more than $75-billion of the company’s market value over the past five years, are still wondering how BlackBerry managed to blow its runaway lead and became a bit player in the smartphone market it invented.An investigation by The Globe and Mail, which included interviews with two dozen past and present company insiders, exposes a series of deep rifts at the executive and boardroom levels.Those divisions hurt the company’s ability to develop products just as it faced its greatest challenge from more nimble and creative rivals – and contributed to the downfall of Canada’s biggest technology company.Once a fast-moving innovator that kept two steps ahead of the competition, RIM grew into a stumbling corporation, blinded by its own success and unable to replicate it. Several years ago, it owned the smartphone world: Even U.S. President Barack Obama was a BlackBerry addict. But after new rivals redefined the market, RIM responded with a string of devices that were late to market, missed the mark with consumers, and opened dangerous fault lines across the organization.Months before their boardroom showdown, Mr. Heins and Mr. Lazaridis found themselves in another strategic standoff in which they were pitted against Jim Balsillie, Mr. Lazaridis’s long-time business partner and co-CEO.Inside RIM, the brash Mr. Balsillie had championed a bold strategy to re-establish the company’s place at the forefront of mobile communications. The plan was to push wireless carriers to adopt RIM’s popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messaging service as a replacement for their short text messaging system (SMS) applications – no matter what kind of phone their customers used.It was a novel plan. If RIM could get BBM onto hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry phones, and charge fees for it, the company would have an enormous new source of profit, Mr. Balsillie believed. “It was a really big idea,” said an employee who was involved in the project.But the plan ran into stiff opposition at senior levels. Not long after Mr. Heins took over as RIM’s CEO in January, 2012, he killed it, with Mr. Lazaridis’s support.That was it for Mr. Balsillie. Weeks later, he resigned from the board and cut his ties to the company.“My reason for leaving the RIM board in March, 2012, was due to the company’s decision to cancel the BBM cross-platform strategy,” Mr. Balsillie said in a brief statement to The Globe and Mail, his first public comments on his departure. He declined a request for an interview.Mr. Lazaridis, who declined to speak about board matters, resigned as a director this past March after delaying his retirement by a year at the board's request.Now, BlackBerry’s future is in doubt. This week, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., a Toronto-based investment company, announced a plan to lead a $4.7-billion takeover of the company. The offer is conditional, and requires a group of so-far uncommitted institutional investors to back Fairfax and provide financing.The company’s near-collapse is a painful situation for Mr. Lazaridis, a gifted engineer who co-founded RIM in a tiny Waterloo office above a bagel shop in 1984.“It’s really hurting me,” he said in an interview. “I can’t imagine what the employees must be thinking. Everyone is talking about the most likely scenario being that it will be broken up and sold off for parts. What will happen to the Waterloo region, or Canada? What company will take its place?”Competition risingMike Lazaridis was at home on his treadmill and watching television when he first saw the Apple iPhone in early 2007. There were a few things he didn’t understand about the product. So, that summer, he pried one open to look inside and was shocked. It was like Apple had stuffed a Mac computer into a cellphone, he thought.To Mr. Lazaridis, a life-long tinkerer who had built an oscilloscope and computer while in high school, the iPhone was a device that broke all the rules. The operating system alone took up 700 megabytes of memory, and the device used two processors. The entire BlackBerry ran on one processor and used 32 MB. Unlike the BlackBerry, the iPhone had a fully Internet-capable browser. That meant it would strain the networks of wireless companies like AT&T Inc., something those carriers hadn’t previously allowed. RIM by contrast used a rudimentary browser that limited data usage.“I said, ‘How did they get AT&T to allow [that]?’ Mr. Lazaridis recalled in the interview at his Waterloo office. “ ‘It’s going to collapse the network.’ And in fact, some time later it did.”Publicly, Mr. Lazaridis and Mr. Balsillie belittled the iPhone and its shortcomings, including its short battery life, weaker security and initial lack of e-mail. That earned them a reputation for being cocky and, eventually, out of touch. “That’s marketing,” Mr. Lazaridis explained. “You position your strengths against their weaknesses.”Internally, he had a very different message. “If that thing catches on, we’re competing with a Mac, not a Nokia,” he recalled telling his staff.RIM soon earned a chance to show up its new rival. RIM’s early smartphones had been a hit for Verizon Wireless, one of the biggest U.S. wireless players. Frozen out of the iPhone – Apple had signed an exclusive deal with AT&T – Verizon executives approached RIM in June, 2007, and asked if it could develop “an iPhone killer.” The product would need to have a touchscreen with no physical keyboard. Verizon would back the U.S. launch with a massive marketing campaign.RIM executives jumped at the chance. At one management meeting, Mr. Balsillie called it RIM’s most important strategic opportunity since the launch of its two-way e-mail pager.The product was the BlackBerry Storm. It was the most complex and ambitious project the company had ever done, but “the technology was cobbled together quickly and wasn’t quite ready,” said one former senior company insider who was involved in the project.The product was months late, hitting the market just before U.S. Thanksgiving in 2008. Many customers hated it. The touchscreen, RIM’s first, was awkward to manipulate. The product ran on a single processor and was slow and buggy. Mr. Balsillie put on a brave face, declaring the launch to be “an overwhelming success,” but sales lagged the iPhone and customer returns were high.The Storm campaign didn’t seem so disastrous at the time: RIM was in the midst of a torrid global expansion. In August, 2009, Fortune crowned it the world’s fastest-growing company. A year after the Storm launch, market research firm comScore reported that four of the top five smartphones U.S. customers intended to buy in the next three months were BlackBerrys.But the Storm had failed to give Verizon Wireless the Apple-killer it coveted, and RIM soon abandoned the product. So the carrier turned to Google Inc. and its new operating system, Android, and built a massive marketing campaign around Motorola’s Droid phone in 2009 – at the expense of marketing dollars to support BlackBerry products. Verizon’s “iDon’t” campaign highlighted all the shortcomings of the iPhone that Android addressed with its consumer-friendly user interface.Rather than hurt Apple, the Droid and other Android-powered phones began to steal share first from Palm and Microsoft, and then RIM. By December, 2010, Android’s market share in the U.S. had grown to 23.5 per cent from 5.2 per cent a year earlier, as RIM’s dropped by 10 points, to 31.6 per cent, according to comScore. By late 2011, Android commanded 47.3 per cent of the U.S. market, while RIM had just 16 per cent.A shift by smartphone usersThis post-iPhone period was an era of strategic confusion for RIM. The overall state of the industry “was a bit schizophrenic,” said Patrick Spence, RIM’s former executive vice-president of global sales, who left in 2012. “There was a time when the [wireless] carriers tried to keep data usage predictable. Then it shifted to a period of trying to drive much more usage in different packages, when the iPhone became compelling.”If there were new rules of the game, RIM would require new tools. The summer after the Storm launched, Mr. Lazaridis bought Torch Mobile, a software development firm that created Internet browsers for mobile phones.But the process of moving, or “porting,” the Torch browser onto RIM’s highly-customized system proved complex and time-consuming. RIM’s technology was based on Java computer code and an operating system built in the 1990s, while the Apple and Android systems used newer software platforms and standards that made it easier to build friendlier user interfaces. “This really meant we were not positioned for the future,” Mr. Lazaridis said. In order to survive, RIM would have to change its DNA.RIM executives figured they had time to reinvent the company. For years they had successfully fended off a host of challengers. Apple’s aggressive negotiating tactics had alienated many carriers, and the iPhone didn’t seem like a threat to RIM’s most loyal base of customers – businesses and governments. They would sustain RIM while it fixed its technology issues.But smartphone users were rapidly shifting their focus to software applications, rather than choosing devices based solely on hardware. RIM found it difficult to make the transition, said Neeraj Monga, director of research with Veritas Investment Research Corp. The company’s engineering culture had served it well when it delivered efficient, low-power devices to enterprise customers. But features that suited corporate chief information officers weren’t what appealed to the general public.“The problem wasn’t that we stopped listening to customers,” said one former RIM insider. “We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did. Consumers would say, ‘I want a faster browser.’ We might say, ‘You might think you want a faster browser, but you don’t want to pay overage on your bill.’ ‘Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.’ ‘Well, you might think you want that, but you don’t want your phone to die at 2 p.m.’ “We would say, ‘We know better, and they’ll eventually figure it out.’ ”Trying to satisfy its two sets of customers – consumers and corporate users – could leave the company satisfying neither. When RIM executives showed off plans to add camera, game and music applications to its products to several hundred Fortune 500 chief information officers at a company event in Orlando in 2010, they weren’t prepared for the backlash that followed. Large corporate customers didn’t want personal applications on corporate phones, said a former RIM executive who attended the session.Meanwhile, it turned out consumers didn’t care so much about battery life or security features. They wanted apps. Apple’s iOs and Google’s Android systems were relatively easy for outside software developers to use, compared to BlackBerry’s technically complicated Java-based system.Blackberry’s apps looked “uglier” than those programmed in more modern languages, and the simulator used to test the apps often didn’t recreate the actual experience, said Trevor Nimegeers, a Calgary-based entrepreneur whose software company, Wmode, has developed apps for BlackBerry. Further, RIM exerted tight control over developers before it would sign off on their apps for use on BlackBerrys, stifling creativity. “Developers wanted to be embraced, not controlled,” Mr. Nimegeers said. As a result, hot apps such as Instagram and Tumblr bypassed BlackBerry.A split companyOne key to RIM’s early success was its corporate structure. It is unusual for a company to have two CEOs – Mr. Lazaridis focused on engineering, product management and supply chain, while Mr. Balsillie looked after sales, finance and other corporate functions – but for a long time, it worked. Mr. Lazaridis’s side of the shop made the phones, and Mr. Balsillie’s sold them. The two men were collegial and collaborative.Below the top executives, however, the two sides of the company didn’t always get along. And as the company grew into a leviathan with $20-billion in annual sales, the structure sometimes made it difficult to get definitive decisions or establish clear accountability. That contributed to a chronic problem for RIM: speed. “They were always slow to market, and there were always delays in launching,” said James Moorman, an analyst with S&P Capital IQ Equity Research. “It was compounded by miscalculating the speed at which the consumer market changed.”Sometimes, feedback from customers that might inspire changes would die at middle management, because senior executives didn’t want to bring it to Mr. Lazaridis, a former insider said.The split company also lost a major unifying force when chief operating officer Larry Conlee retired in 2009. Mr. Conlee was a whip-cracker who held executives to account for decisions and deadlines, establishing a project management office. Many insiders agreed that after he left, a slack attitude toward hitting targets began to permeate the company. “There was a gap” after Mr. Conlee’s departure, Adam Belsher, a former RIM vice-president, told The Globe last year. “There was no real operational executive on the product side that would really get teams to hit deadlines.”After relying on its own technology for so long, Mr. Lazaridis decided the company’s next advance would come from outside. In April, 2010, RIM announced a deal to acquire Ottawa-based QNX Software, a cutting-edge software maker that would provide the building blocks for the BlackBerry 10 operating system – the new platform Mr. Lazaridis knew the company needed.QNX was a specialist in industrial controls that used up-to-date software tools to run applications ranging from 911 call centres to wireless broadband services in vehicles. Its technology was the perfect core for smartphones and tablets, RIM’s leaders felt.Mr. Lazaridis decided to take a page from the business strategy book The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. The book outlines how established organizations that succeeded against challengers often did so by allowing small, cloistered teams to develop their own disruptive products, free from the influence of the rest of the organization.Mr. Lazaridis decided he would isolate the QNX team and get them to focus solely on the new operating system, while leaving existing programmers to work on products for its existing platform, BlackBerry 7. Eventually he hoped QNX, led by its CEO Dan Dodge, would retrain his entire organization.But first, RIM had to answer a key question: If it wanted to remake the BlackBerry on the QNX system, what was the best way to do that? Should it move over some of its old Java-based applications, or rewrite them all from scratch? If the company abandoned Java altogether, what would it mean for third-party developers who used it?These were not easy decisions. Discussions among the senior leaders in Mr. Lazaridis’ organization dragged on for a year – far too long, according to several insiders.Eventually, the decision was made: BlackBerry 10 would be built from scratch. The problem with that approach was that a new team was being entrusted to recreate the BlackBerry. Those who had created the original system were still working on devices for the BlackBerry 7 platform. Once again, the company was split.“We had bought a powerful operating system and needed to move to it. But the BB7 was late,” Mr. Lazaridis said. “Every week, I was getting requests for more hires, more resources. The conundrum was, how do I pull resources off the BB7 to rewrite all the apps on top of QNX?”PlayBook painThe QNX team’s first assignment was to work on an operating system for the PlayBook, RIM’s answer to Apple’s successful iPad tablet. Mr. Lazaridis saw the work as a precursor to the BlackBerry 10 line of smartphones and was impressed by what the team brought to the product. “It helped our developers experience the power and elegance of QNX,” he said.But the QNX team was overwhelmed and needed to draw heavily on the company’s other resources to complete the PlayBook. Similar issues arose later on the BlackBerry 10. The tablet, originally slated to come out in the fall of 2010, didn’t appear until April, 2011, and it failed to sell. It was an awkward accessory to RIM’s smartphones, and lacked e-mail, contacts and apps. Once again, RIM had missed the mark: Tablets that sold well worked as standalone devices, which the PlayBook wasn’t.Some questioned the wisdom of launching the PlayBook in the first place, feeling it was a needless and costly distraction. And the decision to isolate QNX also created tensions and morale problems: Those who weren’t on the team worried about their future.“To me, the most logical thing would have been to integrate the operating system organizations into one,” said one senior executive who was caught up in the fray. “Then you’d have a whole team, not 150 people sitting around saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do next,’ and another 150 people saying ‘I’m over my head.’ ”Meanwhile, RIM’s lack of an advanced smartphone meant that it continued to bleed market share to Apple and Android, especially in the United States. In December, 2010, Verizon Wireless announced it would invest in fourth generation (4G) LTE technology to accommodate the growing demands of customers who wanted to surf the Internet on their phones. It signalled to device makers that it would look to feature 4G smartphones in its marketing.RIM’s 4G phone effort was the BlackBerry 10, but it was far from ready. RIM executives tried to make an engineering argument to carriers that 4G technology was no more efficient than 3G, and that its Bold phones were just fine. Mr. Lazaridis, Mr. Heins and chief technology officer David Yach “were trying to reshape the argument because they knew our products couldn’t go there,” a former executive said. “It was a fight to stay in [promotional] programs with carriers. We lost channel support and feature ads.”The PlayBook debacle and mounting delays of the BlackBerry 10 harmed the organization in other ways.For years, Mr. Yach and Mr. Lazaridis had enjoyed a close working relationship. But as the well-regarded Mr. Yach began to question the company’s ability to hit deadlines on products, his views were dismissed and he was made to feel he wasn’t a team player, damaging their relationship, observers said. He left the company in early 2012.The PlayBook flop merely added to the sense of a company in decline; 2011 became a signNow turning point for RIM. As it became clear the brand was getting trounced in the market, and the BlackBerry 10 project was hit by signNow delays, the stock plunged, falling from $69 (Canadian) in February to less than $15 by the year’s end.The pressure mounted on Mr. Balsillie, Mr. Lazaridis and the board. In January, 2012, they stepped aside as co-CEOs and handed it over to Thorsten Heins, a German executive who had run the company’s handset division.Almost immediately, there was division about how to roll out the BlackBerry 10. The original strategy had called for the company to launch an all-touchscreen version first, because sales were still going well for the company’s BlackBerry 7 keyboard phone.But by 2012, sales of BlackBerry 7 phones had lost steam, and Mr. Lazaridis, now deputy chairman, felt the company should switch its priority to getting a keyboard version out, to meet the demand from BlackBerry die-hards.“This is our bread and butter, our iconic device,” he told an executive at the company. “The keyboard is one of the reasons they buy BlackBerrys.”Mr. Heins’s new management team held firm, sources close to the board said. “They believed everything was going to full touch” and that the QNX-designed system was clearly superior to what was available on other mobile operating systems.To Mr. Lazaridis, abandoning the company’s competitive advantage in the hopes consumers would embrace yet another touchscreen was too risky a strategy, setting up the showdown at the board last year. In the end, management agreed to continue developing the Q10 keyboard phone. But the all-touchscreen Z10 would be launched first.By the time the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones were unveiled in January of this year, market observers generally agreed that the products were two years too late – a view widely shared among many senior RIM insiders.“Buying QNX was the right play ultimately,” said Mr. Spence. “But we didn’t make the turn fast enough. Everyone underestimated the complexity” involved in building the new system.A BBM planFor 20 years, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis operated in tandem, building an increasingly successful partnership that allowed each other’s strengths to flourish.They shared an office in their early years, even possessing each other’s voice mail passwords.As RIM grew, they worked in separate buildings but spoke several times a day. “They had a relationship I wish I had with my wife,” one mid-level executive said.But they had different personalities and their lives seldom intersected outside the office. They have barely spoken since leaving the company.For Mr. Lazaridis, science was both a job and a pastime. Mr. Balsillie was brash, competitive and athletic, and wore his reputation for being aggressive, even bullying in meetings, as a badge of honour. If anything, he viewed that outward toughness as a job requirement, not unlike tech CEOs such as Steve Ballmer at Microsoft Corp. or Apple’s Steve Jobs. “Show me how else you build a $20-billion company,” he once confided to a colleague. “If I was Mr. Easy-going, they would kill BlackBerry.”The two rarely disagreed on key strategic moves – until their last year together. Mr. Lazaridis believed BlackBerry 10 would herald RIM’s renaissance. Mr. Balsillie wasn’t so sure.Mr. Balsillie was concerned that Google had commoditized the smartphone market by making its Android operating system available for free to any handset maker. By 2011, wireless carriers were warning him that they would be ordering fewer BlackBerry products unless he dropped his prices to match rival manufacturers.So Mr. Balsillie pushed an alternative plan.The idea started with Aaron Brown, the executive who oversaw the services division at RIM. By 2010, this division was earning $800-million per quarter in revenue from the monthly service access fee it charged mobile carriers for every BlackBerry subscriber. More than 90 per cent of that was profit. Carriers tried to chip away at those fees – Google and Apple didn’t charge them – but RIM always pushed back. Mr. Balsillie was particularly insistent on keeping the service fees. But the executives knew the company’s weakening position in devices would increase pressure on services revenues as well.Even after its terrible year in 2011, RIM still had several advantages, including close relationships with the world’s major carriers. It also had BlackBerry Messenger.RIM developers created the BBM app in 2005 to enable users to communicate not by e-mail but by using their devices’ “personal identification numbers” or PINs. It was the first instant messaging service built for wireless devices, and it caught on quickly. It was reliable, free, always on and users could send as many messages as they wanted at no extra cost, unlike basic text messages. PINs were random codes, not phone numbers or e-mail addresses, enhancing privacy. That made BBM extremely popular in countries where citizens didn’t enjoy as many freedoms as Western democracies, and helped drive handset sales there.BBM’s developers added a few clever elements that also made it addictive. For example, users would know when a message had been delivered and when it had been read, marked D and R. Today there are 60 million monthly active users.But BBM only worked on BlackBerrys. As Apple and Android took off, BBM knock-offs appeared that could function on those devices, including Kik Interactive Inc., founded by Ted Livingston, a former RIM co-op student. Today Kik, boasts 85 million users, more than BlackBerry (which sued Mr. Livingston for allegedly copying its program). Others, such as WhatsApp, are even larger. Instant messaging “is the killer app of the mobile era,” Mr. Livingston said. “We think there will be a Google or Facebook-sized company that comes out of this category.”RIM’s Mr. Brown believed he could tap into this unfolding trend. While working with Mr. Balsillie on other projects, around late 2010 and early 2011, he began to talk up the concept of offering BBM on other mobile platforms.Mr. Balsillie loved it. At the time, some carriers were pushing for rebates on their monthly service fees. Mr. Brown was willing to comply if the carriers would agree to open new parts of their business to RIM. He and Mr. Balsillie struck upon an idea: Why not give carriers the opportunity to offer BBM to all their customers – no matter what devices they used?Most wireless executives were not fans of instant messaging services and other “over-the-top” apps such as Skype because they eroded the carriers’ revenue from text messaging.To counter that threat, carriers banded together to develop a standardized “rich communication service” (RCS) platform that would enable their customers to exchange text messages, videos, games and other digital information. But the initiative has gained little traction; one commentator recently labelled RCS a “zombie technology.”SMS 2.0Mr. Balsillie began floating the idea that carriers could instead offer BBM as their own enhanced version of text messaging, generating revenue for carriers while providing a cut for RIM. He called it “SMS 2.0.” (SMS stands for “short message service.”) RIM would agree to reduce the fees it charged for services, in exchange for gaining access to hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry users.He and Mr. Brown discussed several options. For example, carriers could offer BBM as part of a standard “talk and text” plan for entry-level smartphone users. Because of its extra functions, BBM would save customers from having to buy a data plan.Or, carriers could offer an expensive plan that included BBM and other offerings from BlackBerry, including one gigabyte of cloud storage on which they could keep photos or songs. The carriers could then sell extra services such as radio through BBM. It would also make the wireless companies’ customers “stickier” – less likely to defect – since they couldn’t move stored data to rival mobile carriers as easily.The SMS 2.0 plan was a throwback to RIM’s move a decade earlier to form partnerships with mobile providers and share revenues. It was a chance to make BBM the dominant chat messaging service, and would have created a new storyfor the BlackBerry brand.A few carriers responded positively to Mr. Balsillie’s initial entreaties and by mid-2011, he was calling SMS 2.0 the company’s top strategic priority.To round out the strategy, and build a suite of cross-platform services, RIM made a few acquisitions, such as instant messaging firm LiveProfile. The service had about 15 million users and worked on Apple and Android devices, giving BBM the entrée it needed to those platforms.But the plan deeply divided the company. BBM was still an important driver of BlackBerry sales. Making it widely available to competitors represented an added threat to RIM’s faltering handset business, led by Mr. Heins at the time. Many inside the company felt a cross-platform BBM made sense, but only when BlackBerry 10 was out. Mr. Balsillie and proponents of his plan felt that would be too late.“It’s fair to say [the risk to handset sales] was a shared concern of everybody I spoke to,” said former RIM executive Mr. Spence. “But it was hard to deny the fact [carriers’ text messaging] revenue was declining. These carriers were looking for a solution and this was a potential solution.”One former executive felt Mr. Balsillie was overestimating the revenue potential of his software-driven strategy. As Mr. Balsillie talked up SMS 2.0, Mr. Heins and his team increasingly cast doubt on it internally. “He was absolutely canvassing behind the scenes working to kill it,” said one company insider.As for Mr. Lazaridis, he was supportive of launching BBM for rival operating systems, but was concerned about the costs and risks involved in building out the SMS 2.0 strategy, said a source close to the board. “We weren’t in a position to be investing in free services that required massive capital expenditure [and could provide] zero payback for maybe a few years if we’re successful,” the source said. Like others, Mr. Lazaridis worried about handset sales.But Mr. Balsillie was increasingly convinced that SMS 2.0 was the way to go. After pitching the plan to CEOs of 12 of the largest wireless carriers in the world in late 2011, he believed he could sign up at least one major U.S. carrier – insiders say AT&T was interested – as well as Telefonica and one or two other European carriers. That’s all it would take, he felt, to convince others to adopt BBM en masse.But other RIM executives who were part of the growing SMS 2.0 team also encountered resistance.Mr. Balsillie was pushing to formally launch SMS 2.0 at an industry conference at the end of February, 2013. But with the company under mounting pressure to overhaul its top leadership, he and Mr. Lazaridis handed the reins to Mr. Heins in late January.A few weeks later, Mr. Heins killed the SMS 2.0 strategy, backed by Mr. Lazaridis.“We had to get the BlackBerry 10 out, and we couldn’t be distracted,” said a source close to the board. “Everything else was shelved. And if that meant getting rid of strategies that didn’t fit, or weren’t complete, or required resources, I think [Mr. Heins] did the right thing.”The Globe and Mail requested interviews with Mr. Heins and with Barbara Stymiest, the chair of the board. The company declined, but agreed to agreed to provide answers to written questions.Asked why he shelved SMS 2.0, Mr. Heins said in an e-mailed response: “There are so many [instant messaging] alternatives in the marketplace that we wanted to be careful to launch only when we felt we could clearly differentiate our offering.”Mr. Balsillie, no longer an executive but still a board member, urged directors to reconsider, but they backed the new CEO. Mr. Balsillie couldn’t abide by the decision. He resigned from the board in late March, then sold all his stock. Few people knew the reason for his departure, including his long-time co-CEO, Mr. Lazaridis.BlackBerry did launch a version of its BBM application last weekend for iPhones and Android devices, but simply as a stand-alone app. Andrew Bocking, the executive who oversees BBM, said that with built-in capabilities to have group chats, share photos, calendar items and other features, “it really takes BBM to a whole other level … I believe there is an opportunity for a dominant player in instant messaging and there will be one winner-take-all.”To those who championed the SMS 2.0 strategy, most of them now gone, RIM should have been well on its way there already.A fizzled launchFinally, close to six years after Apple unveiled the iPhone, the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 made its debut at a glitzy launch event in January, featuring singer Alicia Keys as the company’s “global creative director.” It was a minor detail in a much larger story, but the made-up title and meaningless job irked some who wondered why the company was distracting itself with celebrity endorsements while in the fight of its life.The Z10 device itself won a number of positive reviews. The New York Times’ David Pogue, who previously had predicted that the BlackBerry was doomed, began his review: “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” But eight months later, it’s hard to see the launch as anything other than a total business failure, given the sheer volume of unsold smartphones now written off.The marketing campaign was confusing and vague: An ad that ran during the Super Bowl failed to explain what made the product distinct. A source close to the board said directors weren’t shown the ad before it ran, and some didn’t understand the content or the slogan, “Keep Moving.” There were no lineups, and no buzz for the product – nothing like the frenzy of publicity that seems to surround the launch of each new version of the iPhone.Once again, the market had shifted, and there was little demand for the Z10 in an era where sophisticated operating systems were commonplace and phones were getting cheaper. The one advantage the BlackBerry may have had over its rivals – a physical keyboard – wasn’t present in the first model to hit the market.“The only people still clamouring for a new smartphone from BlackBerry were in it for the keyboard,” said S&P’s Mr. Moorman. “Then they come out with a touchscreen. Anyone who wanted a touchscreen was already gone.”As it turns out, both Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis were proven right. It was hard enough to compete in a commoditizing smartphone market. Leading with the wrong product on top of that only made BlackBerry’s task more hopeless. Mr. Heins’s strategic errors only compounded the challenging situation he had inherited.The product was difficult to sell for other reasons. One company insider said it could take close to an hour for young sales staff to demonstrate the product in dealer stores.And many long-time BlackBerry users found that the new system was too different from the classic BlackBerry experience for their liking. Many of the little “moments of delight,” as they are called in the company, were forgotten or overlooked by the QNX developers who lacked ties to the company’s past. For example, users can’t hit “u” and look at the last unread message in their inbox, nor can they easily shift to the next or previous e-mail, as they could on older BlackBerrys. Pocket-dialling is a constant hazard.Meanwhile, the company was slow to provide service to business users – such as helping them to transfer applications they had written for the old BlackBerry system. Software developers were left with dead-end investments after learning they would have to rewrite their apps for the new system if they wanted to remain part of the BlackBerry world. Many simply didn’t bother.“The decisions we made over the last two years were made within the context of a volatile, competitive and ever-changing marketplace – and always with the goal of delivering the vital technology that our customers need,” Mr. Heins said in a written response to questions about the success of the BlackBerry 10 launch. While he called the launch “a signNow accomplishment and one that involved the reinvention of our company,” he acknowledged it “did not meet our expectations.”As for Mr. Lazaridis, he has not given up on the enterprise he founded 29 years ago.He is still a minority shareholder in BlackBerry, and continues to be the subject of rumours he may join a group to buy out his former company.Mr. Lazaridis declined to discuss any such plans, but it is clear he believes the BlackBerry story is not over.“Many companies go through cycles. Intel experienced it, IBM experienced it, Apple experienced it. Our job was to reinvent ourselves, which we all believed BB10 would do,” he said.“The fact that a Canadian company was able to compete in that space with two of the largest tech companies in the world is a big deal. People counted IBM, Apple and other companies out only to be proven wrong. I am rooting that they are wrong on BlackBerry as well.”
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What types of websites are most likely to contain viruses or malware?
What types of websites are most likely to contain viruses or malware? Websites that sell ads from real-time ad broker networks. By far, by far, the most common way for viruses and malware to be spread from Web sites is through poisoned ads.What is the most dangerous website?So be careful when you visit these sites, since your computer may not come out in good health, after your visit.#1 Ucoz. com. Description: Site hosting. Global rank in malware hosting: 14.#2 sapo .pt.#3 Amazonaws .com.#4 Blogspot .de.#5 4shared .com.#6 sendspace .com.#7 comcast .net.Can certain websites cause viruses?Yes, it's entirely possible to get infected by simply visiting a website. Most commonly via what we call "Exploit Kits". Right now, EK are used to deliver a lot of dangerous malware (such as banking trojans and Cryptoware) to computers worldwide. So using a standard Antivirus and Antimalware won't cut it.Can you get a phone virus from a website?How phones get viruses. The most common way for a smartphone to get a virus is by downloading a third-party app. However, this isn't the only way. You can also get them by downloading Office documents, PDFs, by opening infected links in emails, or by visiting a malicious website.Threat 1 >> Malicious Flash files that can infect your PCThe Place: Websites that use FlashsignNow's Flash graphics software has become a big malware target in recent years, forcing the company to push out frequent security patches. But another danger you might not know about is associated with Flash cookies. Flash cookies are small bits of data that their creators can use to save Flash-related settings, among other things. But like regular cookies, Flash cookies can track the sites you visit, too. Worse still, when you delete your browser's cookies, Flash cookies get left behind.If You Have to Go There: To help protect against Flash-based attacks, make sure you keep your Flash browser plug-ins up-to-date. And you can configure the Flash plug-in to ask you before it downloads any Flash cookies.Threat 2 >> Shortened links that lead you to potentially harmful placesThe Place: TwitterScammers love Twitter since it relies so much on URL shorteners, services that take long Internet addresses and replace them with something briefer.And it's very simple to hide malware or scams behind shortened URLs. A shortened link that supposedly points to the latest Internet trend-du-jour may be a Trojan horse in disguise.If You Have to Go There: Simply don't click links. Of course, that takes some of the fun out of Twitter. The other option is to use a Twitter client app. TweetDeck and Tweetie for Mac have preview features that let you see the full URL before you go to the site in question.Some link-shortening services, such as Bit.ly, attempt to filter out malicious links, but it seems to be a manual process, not an automatic one. TinyURL has a preview service you can turn on.Threat 3 >> E-mail scams or attachments that get you to install malware or give up personal infoThe Place: Your e-mail inboxAlthough phishing and infected e-mail attachments are nothing new, the lures that cybercrooks use are constantly evolving, and in some cases they're becoming more difficult to distinguish from legitimate messages. My junk mailbox has a phishing e-mail that looks like a legitimate order confirmation from Amazon. The only hint that something's amiss is the sender's e-mail address.If You Have to Go There: Don't trust anything in your inbox. Instead of clicking on links in a retailer's e-mail, go directly to the retailer's site.Threat 4 >> Malware hiding in video, music, or software downloadsThe Place: Torrent sitesTorrent sites (such as BitTorrent) are often used for sharing pirated music, videos, or software, and are a trove of malware. No one vets the download files--they may be malware in disguise.Ben Edelman, privacy researcher and assistant professor at Harvard Business School, thinks torrent sites are the most dangerous places to visit, since they don't have a business model or reputation to defend (by comparison, many porn sites rely on being deemed trustworthy). "The [torrent] customers, they really don't want to pay," he says.If You Have to Go There: It's probably best to avoid torrent sites entirely, given their untrustworthy content, but if you must visit, use a secondary PC to protect your main system. Use antivirus software, and keep it updated. Scan downloaded files and wait a couple of days before opening them. Brand-new malware can be tricky to catch, but the delay in opening may allow your antivirus software to get the necessary signatures.Threat 5 >> Malware in photos or videos of scantily clad womenThe Place: ‘Legitimate' porn sitesPorn sites have a reputation of being less secure than mainstream sites, but that assumption doesn't tell the whole story. "There is no doubt that visiting Websites of ill-repute is deadly dangerous. If you make a habit of it, it's a given that you'll be attacked at some point," says Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security firm AVG. "Unfortunately, staying away from those sites won't keep you safe by itself, because innocent sites get hacked all the time, and are used as lures to draw victims to the attack servers."And as mentioned earlier, many porn sites operate as actual, legitimate businesses that want to attract and retain customers. That said, it may be hard to tell the "legit" porn sites from malware-hosting sites that use porn as a lure.If You Have to Go There: Be suspicious of video downloads, or sites that require you to install video codecs to view videos (see the next threat, below). Using tools like AVG's LinkScanner and McAfee's SiteAdvisor (or SiteAdvisor for Firefox) can help you weed out the malicious sites.And, again, consider visiting such sites on a secondary machine. You don't want your browser history on the family PC.Threat 6 >> Trojan horses disguised as video codecs, infecting your PC with malwareThe Place: Video download sites, peer-to-peer networksIf you watch or download video online, you've likely been told to download a video codec--a small piece of software that provides support for a type of video file--at least once. Usually, these bits of software are perfectly legitimate (for example, the popular DivX codec), but some less-than-reputable download services or video sites may direct you to download a piece of malware disguised as a codec. Security software company Trend Micro provides a good example of what these attacks look like.If You Have to Go There: Your safest option is to stick with well-known video sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. And for catching up on the latest episodes of your favorite TV shows, sites and services like Hulu, http://TV.com, ABC Home Page - ABC.com, and iTunes are safer than peer-to-peer networks.Threat 7 >> Geolocation--your smartphone and perhaps other parties know where you areThe Place: Your smartphoneThe smartphone market is still in its infancy, really, and so are the threats. One possible concern is the use--or abuse--of geolocation. Although plenty of legitimate uses for location data exist, the potential for inappropriate uses also exists. In one case, a game listed on the Android Market was in reality a client for a spy app. In a less invidious example, a site called Please Rob Me showed that--for a time--a stream of FourSquare check-ins indicated that a person was away from their home (the site's goal, mind you, wasn't to condone theft, but to raise awareness of the issue).Apple recently updated its privacy policy to reflect changes in how it handles location data in iOS 4. The policy now states that "to provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use and share precise location data." You can read more on Apple's new privacy terms and what they mean for you.If You Have to Go There: Be particular about the location-based sites, apps, and services that you use. As shown in the screenshot at right services such as Yelp provide good examples of useful location-aware apps. On the other hand, weigh the privacy implications of services like FourSquare or the new Facebook Places feature, and consider how much you feel comfortable divulging. (Read more on how to retain privacy on FourSquare and Facebook Places.)Threat 8 >> 'Poisoned' search engine results that go to malware-carrying WebsitesThe Place: Search enginesSearch engine poisoning is the practice of building tainted sites or pages that are designed to rank high in a search on a given topic. For example, according to a recent study by the security firm McAfee, 19 percent of search results for "Cameron Diaz and screensavers" had some sort of malicious payload. Breaking news topics and Facebook are also common search targets for attackers.If You Have to Go There: Pick and choose which sites to go to. Don't just blindly click search results; check each URL first to make sure that it really leads to the site you want.Threat 9 >> Malicious PDFs that try to fool you into installing malwareThe Place: Hacked Websites, plus your inboxAs Microsoft has become more serious about Windows security over the past few years, would-be attackers have had to find new ways to infect PCs. Attacking flaws in signNow is one of these newer methods. So-called poisoned PDFs are PDF files that have been crafted in such a manner that they trigger bugs in signNow and signNow; posted on a hijacked Website, they may let an attacker commandeer your PC and access your files and personal info.A newer variant takes an otherwise innocent-looking PDF document and inserts malware into it. signNow may pop up an alert asking if you want to run the malware, but hackers can edit those messages to trick you into opening the file.How serious is this problem? In 2009, attacks using malicious PDFs made up 49 percent of Web-based attacks, according to security firm Symantec.If You Have to Go There: First, always make sure that you're running the latest version of signNow.Threat 10 >> Malicious video files using flaws in player software to hijack PCsThe Place: Video download sitesAttackers have been known to exploit flaws in video players such as QuickTime Player and use them to attack PCs. The threats are often "malformed" video files that, like malicious PDFs, trigger bugs in the player software that let the attackers in to spy on you, plant other malware, and more.If You Have to Go There: Keep your player software up-to-date. Apple and Microsoft periodically release patches for QuickTime and Windows Media Player, respectively. Avoid downloading videos at random. Stick to well-known video sites such as YouTube, or to download services like iTunes.Threat 11 >> Drive-by downloads that install malware when you visit a siteThe Place: Hacked legitimate sitesA drive-by download occurs when a file downloads and/or installs to your PC without you realizing it. Such downloads can happen just about anywhere. Some sites are built to lure people into a drive-by download; but in a common attack method, criminals will hack a Web page, often on an otherwise legitimate site, and insert code that will download malware to your computer.If You Have to Go There: The first thing to do is to keep your security software up-to-date, and to run regular malware scans. Many security suites can flag suspicious downloads.Threat 12 >> Fake antivirus software that extorts money--and your credit card informationThe Place: Your inbox, hacked legitimate sitesFake antivirus programs look and act like the real thing, complete with alert messages. It isn't until you realize that these alerts are often riddled with typos that you know you're in trouble.Most fake antivirus software is best described as extortionware: The trial version will nag you until you purchase the fake antivirus software-which usually does nothing to protect your PC. Once you send the criminals your credit card information, they can reuse it for other purposes, such as buying a high-priced item under your name.Threat 13 >> Fraudulent ads on sites that lead you to scams or malwareThe Place: Just about any ad-supported WebsiteHey--ads aren't all bad! They help sites pay the bills. But cybercriminals have taken out ads on popular sites to lure in victims. Last year, the New York Times site ran an ad from scammers, and earlier this year some less-than-scrupulous companies were gaming Google's Sponsored Links ad program and placing ads that looked like links to major companies' Websites."The bad guys have become very clever at exploiting online advertising networks, tricking them into distributing ads that effectively load malicious content--especially nasty, scaremongering pop-ups for rogue antispyware," says Eric Howes, director of research services for security firm GFI Software.If You Have to Go There: Most large sites, such as PCWorld - News, tips and reviews from the experts on PCs, Windows, and more, have ad sales departments that work frequently with a core group of large advertisers, so it's probably safe to click a Microsoft ad on the New York Times site. But as the Google Sponsored Links incident shows, nothing is entirely fail-safe.Threat 14 >> Questionable Facebook appsThe Place: FacebookFacebook apps have long been an issue for security experts. You don't always know who's developing the apps, what they're doing with the data they may be collecting, or the developers' data security practices. Even though you have to approve apps before they can appear on your profile and access your personal information, from there the security of your data is in the developer's hands.If You Have to Go There: Be selective about the apps you add to your profile--don't take every quiz, for example. Check your privacy settings for Facebook apps, as well: Click the Account drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of Facebook's site, select Privacy Settings, and then click Edit your settings under ‘Applications and Websites'. There, you can control which apps have access to your data, and which of your friends can see what information from apps (such as quiz results); you can also turn off Facebook apps altogether.Threat 15 >> Sites that lure you in, get you to sign up, then sell your e-mail address for spamThe Place: 'Free electronics' sitesYou've no doubt seen sites around the Web blaring, Get a free iPad! Get a free notebook! A free iPod! It's easy! These sites aren't typically dangerous in the classical sense--you probably won't get infected with malware--but your personal information could be sold to other businesses, who can then use it to sell more stuff to you.If You Have to Go There: Read the privacy policies. And then read them again. Also, beware of privacy policy loopholes--even though a site says that it won't sell your private data to third parties, depending on the language of the policy, they may still be able to give your information to "affiliates."Threat 16 >> Phishing 2.0 on social networks that tricks you into downloading malware or giving your Facebook login information to a criminalThe Place: Social networksQuestionable Facebook apps and malicious shortened links aren't the only dangers lurking on social networks. Sites like Facebook have given rise to new forms of phishing. Scammers might hijack one person's Facebook account, then use it to lure that person's friend into clicking a malicious link, going to spam sites, or giving up their Facebook login information--thereby giving scammers one more Facebook account to hijack."One of the bigger dangers currently facing users is malware, adware, and spyware spread through social networks like Facebook and Twitter," says Eric Howes, director of malware research with Sunbelt Software. "Users may receive spam via these networks offering them free deals, links to interesting videos, or even widgets to enhance their Facebook profiles. In many cases what's really being pushed on users is adware, spyware, or even malicious software that can exploit users' PCs."If You Have to Go There: Don't trust every link posted to Facebook, even if one of your friends posted it. Be especially suspicious if the post is out of the ordinary for that person. Check the person's wall or Twitter @-replies to see if anyone is concerned that the person's account has been compromised.And if you suspect that your account has been hijacked, change your password immediately. Both Facebook and Twitter have resources to help you keep up-to-date on the latest threats on both sites. Facebook users should visit its security page; if you're on Twitter, be sure to follow @spam and @safety for Twitter security best practices.Threat 17 >> Oversharing--exposing too much personal information on your social network profilesThe Place: Social networksHow many times have you seen friends on Facebook or Twitter publicly divulge a bit more information than is necessary? Oversharing isn't just a matter of getting a little too personal--it can leave your private information viewable to the general public. But it's avoidable."There is a subtle danger that few people understand with the social networking sites, and that is the idea of information leakage," says AVG's Roger Thompson. "People, particularly teens, put all sorts of information online, without realizing that many more people than just their friends can see that data."Oversharing could very well lead to more serious privacy issues further down the road, Thompson adds. "As today's young teens signNow an age to apply for a credit card, I fully expect an onslaught of fraudulent card applications on their behalf, because they unwittingly divulged so much information. Harvesting is going on now, and we have no idea who is doing the harvesting."If You Have to Go There: This particular threat is relatively easy to avoid, in that a little common sense can go a long way: Just be mindful of what you post. Do you really need to publish your home address and phone number to your Facebook profile?Finally, be certain to check your privacy settings to make sure that you're not divulging your deepest, darkest secrets to all 500 million Facebook users.
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